


Behind Brown Eyes

by MsLanna



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-01-16 16:03:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18524899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsLanna/pseuds/MsLanna
Summary: Number 42, Connor - born with the 'power' to experience life through the other 42 children in times of strong emotions.I have some kind of plot in mind.Written in ficlets, posted out of order.Years and names of starring canon characters in the chapter titels for easy perusing.I am doing this for fun, regular updates are unlikely. But then each bit is a self-contained ficlet.So far, no ship visible on the horizon.If you need a faceclaim,this is Connor on one of her dapper days...





	1. 2019 Conversation (Five)

"You knew all seven of us?" The boy's voice is disbelieving.

  
"Seven?" Connor snorts. It wasn't really a conversion she wanted to have, but it was inevitable. "There was 43 of us."

  
"43?" Five repeats. "Was?" He adds shortly after. "How many are there now?"

  
"38 give or take." She shrugs.

  
"Give or take?" He gives her one of those looks. "That doesn't make sense."

  
"Well, I'm not sure whether to cou

nt Ludmilla who can jump between dimensions and only pops up now and then. Also Ben since he keeps hanging around with Klaus."  
"A fair point," Five agrees. "What about the others?"

  
Connor takes a deep breath. "The first to go was Lauren. She could conjure fire, it manifested around her third year, but nobody believed she wasn't just very good at getting her hands on matches. One night, she sneezes in her sleep and the whole house goes up in flames. Very painful. Jerome was the next, a bit of an idiot, really. Could fly and his powers increase exorbitantly in adolescence. He deigned to disregard the collapse of the warning system though. Bad choice when you tap out several hundred feet above ground."

  
"He didn't have flares of panicked power bursts?" Five asked. "Those are pretty common."

  
"Oh, he had bursts alright." Connor gripped her cup tighter. "Just enough of them to prolong this experience unpleasantly long. At least it ended in one dark, hard splat.

  
"Then there was Joylyn, amazing girl, could hold her breath for forever which is very useful if you live on an island cluster. No match for modern submarine turbines, though. Also, very painful. Then there was Ichiro, could see the future, became depressed and suicidal. I think you can guess why. Took to drugs and lasted a lot shorter than Klaus who seems rather indestructible despite his heavy substance abuse."

  
"Did you see it through his eyes? The end off the world?" he asked.

  
"Yes, but it changed every time. Small things sometimes, everything other times." She shrugged. "But it was always the end of the world and it was coming closer. And it always ended the same: the world in rubble and fire, no survivors.  He couldn't bear it. I don't blame him."

  
"No, no you don't." Five looked thoughtful. "So what was your plan?"

  
"I had no plan." Connor admitted. "What can I do? What can anybody do? When I heard Hargreeves died, I just came here, thinking maybe this time," she broke off. "Anyway, here I am."

  
"I didn't see your corpse in the academy."

  
"Well, that means either that things are already changing because I wasn't there, or I was just under a lot of rubble." She shrugged.

  
"Great." Five emptied his cup and got up to leave. "Just great."


	2. 1994 Sneeze (Ben)

Don't do it. Don't do it, don't doit dontdoit - _Do_. **_Not_**. _Do_. IT!

  
It is a prayer and as useful as one. Burying the nose in the elbow doesn't help at all. The sneeze forces its way out, as do four tentacles, swooshing into this plane of existence. They do not like it here. Gravity is strange and the air hurts.

  
They flail about, unable to find the source of their distress, latching on to random objects in their path: a glass, a pen, a book. They destroy them unthinking, moving o when that doesn't affect their predicament.

  
It doesn't hurt per se, but Connor can feel the second-hand pain of the tentacles, the first-hand unwillingness of Ben. He never asked for any of this. He doesn't want it. Why doesn't his father try to find a cure?

  
The itch in their nose subsides and as they calm down, so do the tentacles and slowly retreat into their own dimension. Ben blows his nose. He is not happy about the coming talk from his father about his reluctance to control the extra arms, bend them to his will and make them tools and nothing more.

  
Connor tries to tune out. She cannot help Ben. She tried. But she cannot help any of them She can't even help herself sitting curled up in the middle of day care, arms slung around her belly. Miss Aya crouches before her and is talking. Connor does her best to concentrate on her. This is her. This is the life of Connor. Sometimes it is difficult to remember, to keep them all apart. They are so many.

  
But this is Connor and Miss Aya is scolding. There is an empty cup on the floor and a lake of juice. This is the last juice for Conner until she controls her impulses. No more juice, just water. Was that clear?

  
Connor nods. It was just another item on a very long list. Sometimes it was hard not to be somebody else because it just was nicer.


	3. 2016 Career

It wasn't a trained skill but it was a job she could hold down despite everything. It was difficult to have a career when any given moment the strong emotions of one of 40 people could immobilise you or worse.

  
But it was a small shop and since Connor had started, the number of regulars had increased noticeably. She made it worth the effort. Most customers didn't even specify their order any more. They just went up to her, ordered coffee and paid for whatever they got.

  
It wasn't a trained skill. But Connor had the coffee encyclopedia of 38 people in her head. And each of them had their own reasons to drink coffee and the for kind they chose. It accumulated. After some time it was simple to see it in other people. The reasons they wanted some what would work for them.

  
Coffee to get pumped, coffee to calm down, coffee to remember, coffee to forget, coffee to socialise. The rest was trappings. And even with the trappings Connor was good by now. Extra shots, flavours, cream, toppings. Once she put a slice of cucumber with espresso and cream and gotten no complaints.

  
And when little Connor had one of her moments again, you just put her in the back room until it was over. It wasn't perfect, but she held the job and the customers kept coming.


	4. 2001 Death (Klaus)

It wasn't the first time they saw the dead. But now it is different, locked up in their home, curled up in a corner in the darkness, their figures the only light around… They scream their lungs out.

  
Connor didn't know where they are really, only that Klaus' primal fear pulled her into the darkness. The ghosts hover, pulled to him as much as she is. Drawn by being seen. There is no way out for them.

  
Klaus tried the door, fingers still sore from scraping over the cold stone. But it is shut from the other side, never meant to be opened by those who have their last abode here. There are too many of them for a tiny mausoleum like this. It is a logical thought. It is hers. It doesn't reach Klaus, who is curled up in a corner. He doesn't care how many there should be. This are too many to stand. So they scream.

  
The ghosts don’'t care. They hover, they approach as do people who take Connor's hands and feet, uncurl her into sterile white laced with needles and restraints. It hurts, the physical difference to Klaus who could still wrap his arms around his legs whereas she is spread-eagled, hands and ankles cuffed to rails of the bed, infusions stuck into her arms, mask suffocating over her mouth but never stopping the screams.

  
It is unreal, the whiteness around her, merging into the blackness around Klaus; his ghosts incorporeal and threatening, scaring while her surroundings breake her into a form fitting their own understanding.

  
_Just talk to them,_ Connor wants to shout, mostly so she can talk to her own jailers. But Klaus is beyond listening. As if he knows the ghosts can touch him as much as real people touch Connor, as if seeing was only the first step into a deep chasm of undead interactions.

  
Restraints clutch at her ankles and wrists, needles jabbing in her arm. Frowning faces hover over her, bound mouths talking without opening, stern eyes, sad eyes, curious eyes, digging into her head. If this is the living, you did not want the dead to touch.

  
So they scream and scream and scream until they don’t, too exhausted to sleep, waiting in resignation until the door finally opens, showing double vision to Conner and stark relief for Klaus.

  
"Can I go now?"

  
It is so strange that this should resound louder in her head than her own voice calling papa.

  
Bearded faces tower, looking down. It is so hard to focus on the compassion on her father's face, the pain. The words. Connor tries to read his lips, fear roaring in her ears still.

  
The other dad's words are also unclear. They don't matter. Nothing matters except getting out, leaving this hellish place. Something cold nagging at their neck as they nod.

  
_You must become the master of your own life._ A lesson not meant for her, but Connor reaches. If only she could control, if only-  
"Please, I want to go home."

  
A whimper. Maybe hers as well. Klaus is so scared it is hard to know what she is doing. And it doesn't matter, because this white prison is no better than his dark one. She wants to go home. Feel her father's hands reassuring, in her head and back, her mother's embrace.

  
They are both crying. Glances over their heads, exchanged in white, musing in black and the final verdict.

  
_Three more hours._   
_I am sorry._

  
The fathers leave and the door closes sealing them in searing white and suffocating black.

  
"Don't leave me!" they go unheard and her world drwon in darkness again, the white tainted even the air tinted with inky smears until it fades completely into darkness, until all the white is gone except for the faces of the ghosts. They whimper. Alone and left alone forlorn in the dark forever.

  
Connor tried to hug Klaus, but physical images had no meaning in the place where they met. As always, oblivious of her existence and presence. She could not help any of them.


	5. 2019 Loop (Connor)

The first time the world ended, Connor was just minding her own business. She might have seen it coming, if the last time Ichiro had pulled her into one of his desolate visions of no future hadn't been so long ago. Or if she had paid closer attention to the date of his recurring apocalyptic premonitions.

As things stood, she had not. So Connor faced the approaching inferno with an unfinished caramel latte in one hand and a stupid look on her face.

Then it got very hot very fast. It didn't help that 37 people felt the same firestorm, admittedly at different stages. Some were several degree burns ahead. Connor only wanted it to stop.

It did. Just as she closed her eyes, the world went still, silent, aghast. She didn't dare breathe. The echoes of 37 deaths bounced around in her mind. All painful, all fresh, all too much. She didn't want it to start again. This stunned silence was better by far.

Of course it couldn't last. The world lay in rubble and ashes. She was looking for -

\- family, anybody. Please be alive! You were alive only moments ago -

Connor didn't have family. She hadn't lived in this part of the city either. She barely recognised the building from its rubble. She way way too short, too. Connor closed her eyes again but things kept happening. She knew. The grey faces of siblings, the desperation, the loneliness.

They jerked to a halt.

Connor knew that loneliness. Not as her own or the specific isolation of being gifted. She knew this specific brand of loneliness.

But they were all dead. How could anybody survive?

A tendril of past crept up on her, sheer exhilaration chopped short, popping up like a memory for moments before vanishing again. Seeping back into her mind now as sudden pain and realisation.

Nobody could survive that.  
Nobody had.

But if you could vanish at one point in time and reappear at another…

Five.

They jolted around. Somebody had called their name in this desolation. But it was impossible. They were all alone. And yet. And yet. They _could_ not be alone in this wasteland. There _had_ to be somebody else!

Connor closed her eyes. There was nobody else. She hadn't wanted to die. But she wasn't sure that this was any better. There was nowhere to go. No place to hide. No escape.

There was only one head.


	6. 2019 Homecoming (Five)

It was the strongest pull Connor had ever felt. Irresistible, inexorable, inevitable. Stronger than the highest highs she had been dragged into, deeper than the first death. Connor did the only thing she could, move to the centre of her room, towards the thick carpeted emptiness dominating her home.

  
Determination and triumph followed her closely, overtaking her. It started at the hands, dipped into burning static. Gripping at invisible edges that cut old into the flesh before it moved upwards, to the elbows, shoulders, slowly meshing them until the views merged.

  
Connor jerked back in recognition. It was like a worry stone ground to a sharp edge at one side, like a fossil cut from the surrounding stone no longer a possibility to see but stark reality of unyielding lines.

  
Years of memories filled the space that separated them, more years than possible, spilling over and flooding her mind. But it wasn’t a single emotion pulling her this time. Nothing as easy as joy, pain or anger. Determination spearheaded a whirlwind of feelings like a silver tipped arrow shooting towards its destiny. It pointed inwards, backwards to the future, dragging her in all directions at once, even in time.

  
Images brushed over her in a blur; burning deserts, blizzards, searing loneliness over broken stone. Years of determination buried Connor and left her breathless. And even more real the certainty that this shouldn’t be, couldn’t didn’t have to, mustn’t, had to be averted. This was it, the culmination of years of relentless effort, the pay-off of hard work an unshakeable love.

  
The images matched like a foil reversed, the boy’s face swept up from memory, reaching for the aged man and mind. In the moment they reunited, they stumbled forwards, down, back in time, and yet today as blistering blue tugged as their very being with ragged fingers of white rage.

  
They vibrated in the effort to make it happen, to return to the one place, the one people that spelled out love however difficult. This, here and now was where things changed forever, where they bent the past to their will to make the future happen.  
Connor gasps for air as they fall back into their future, the hard floor and dirt mixing under their hands. She raised her head with his, staggers to her feet - something she hadn’t had to do for a very long time. But up they went, the faces before them intensely glowing; strange and familiar to both of them for different reasons.

  
They were still their family, still the same idiots, older, no wiser, each of them broken in their own way, misshapen cogs of a machine that had stopped working long ago. It was strange to see all of them together again after all this time.

  
The Klaus spoke, tone soft, unwilling to hope, afraid it might be his truth alone. “Does anyone else see young Number Five or is that just me?” he said and the words were everything.

  
Another realisation creeping up like feeling the sore of a lost tooth. For a second it was like staring into a mirror, seeing the other look out of it wide eyed and blinking. Connor stumbled. With the flick of a thought she was alone, kneeling before her carpet. Thrown out. Cut off. She blinked. It was the first time ever this had happened.

  
Tentatively Connor reached out. It was him, he was back indeed. Not like the shadows of himself she felt flickering in and out over the years. Five was back and his mind was a mess.


End file.
